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The Environmental Impact Of The Great Barrier Reef

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The 2,300 km Great Barrier Reef is a UNESCO World Heritage site and the world's largest protected reef system.
It is one of the world's natural wonders, covering an area larger than Italy and drawing nearly 2 million tourists every year to boat, swim, snorkel and dive amid its elaborate flora and fauna. It generates some $6 billion in revenue for Australia annually which equates to about 19 Airbus A380’s or 1,333 Lamborghini Veneno roadsters at 4.5 Million each, and the great barrier reef provides employment to more than 50,000 people- enough to almost fill Adelaide oval. It's also one of the planet's most fragile ecosystems, home to more than 11,000 species that live, if not necessarily in harmony, in a careful …show more content…

Corals build colonies that secrete calcium carbonate to form ocean reefs. When they're healthy, coral reefs provide shelter and food for animals all along the food chain, including the top: us. Across the planet, half a billion people rely, directly and indirectly, on corals for their living. That's why what happens to the 9,000-year-old Great Barrier Reef, as well as to other reefs worldwide, is critical. The floods in Queensland have hurt the Great Barrier Reef by funnelling into the ocean vast plumes of freshwater and agricultural runoff that could severely damage the coral. Besides the extreme rain that sparked the floods, rising ocean temperatures, changes to the ocean's chemistry and the global trade in natural resources — all symptoms of our fossil-fuel economy — are waging a multiform war on the marine …show more content…

Overfishing and pollution can be much more effectively dealt with by focusing on local responses.
Corals dislike warm water about as much as acidity. When oceans get typically warm, corals can eject the algae that symbiotically live in their skeletons, providing food in exchange for shelter. The ejection process is called bleaching, named by the white skeleton left behind when the coral gets sick and, in some cases, dies.
As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, global warming will increase ocean temperatures and, along with that, the frequency and severity of bleaching events. In 2010, one of the hottest years in recorded human history, reefs bleached throughout the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean and off the coasts of Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Without the necessary reduction in the production of emissions, the death of the Great Barrier Reef will result in 6 billion dollars less in the economy and the loss of more than 50,000 jobs, If the oceans' corals were to collapse, the whole food chain will

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